//longform writing about my frustration with... everything
I think I live in a Skinner box for queers. It is called the United States, and the induced condition is paranoia, and the reward is everyone telling me that I’m so brave. …
I have had the most beautiful experiences of my life since I transitioned. I sit in the bathtub and look at the body that hormones and God have given me and I cry. I have climbed mountains and seen beauty on an Earth I scarcely believe I am allowed to explore. I have improved as a photographer in no small part because every little facet of the world enamors me anew at age 27, like I’m a child seeing it for the first time. Everything is magical. I love wholly and without remorse.
This week, I am having difficulty sleeping, showering, listening to music, or getting groceries. I am having difficulty breathing every time the house settles. I am having difficulty living. I can’t fucking live like this.
Every minute I’m in the shower with the water running, or belting out Mitski as I cook, is a minute I can’t hear a car go by, or stop at my house. Every time I go out among strangers, there are too many people to judge all of their intent; was that look animosity towards me, or is my skirt just weird? Every second I lie in bed, I wonder if people will continue to tolerate me for another day, or year, or decade. My heart is constantly in my throat. It’s paranoia, or it’s PTSD, or it’s clinical anxiety, but whatever it is, it’s just realistic enough to not hand-wave it away.
…
Three weeks ago, on the day meant to commemorate my community’s endless losses to the violence of a world that eternally hates us, five more people were gunned down for being queer. The entire ecosystem of right-wing personalities who make their income on stoking fear of LGBT people took a victory lap. The shooter’s lawyers said he is nonbinary for no apparent reason beyond trolling the dead. The entire event had a different air than the Pulse club shooting years ago, where thoughts and prayers were still offered to the 49 dead queers; this time, the mask came off. Our rhetorical enemies—the self-proclaimed theocratic fascists and stochastic terrorists—are on the same page, at long last. Queers—especially trans people—are a threat, and our eradication should be celebrated.
I struggled with this.
This week, I was followed home and threatened. It wasn’t for being trans, unlike the last several times I’ve been followed and threatened—instead, it was just some lunatic convinced a sleepy town of 3,000 people had a massive crime wave, and that lining up a photograph in the middle of the street was me casing an antique shop—but all I can think since he left, hand under his dash on something in his shitty Dodge Caravan the whole time he yelled at me, is oh my God, did he clock me. Frankly, he looked like the type too stupid to accurately do so, but simultaneously he also looked the type to kill me if he did. I live in rural Idaho. I may only have a few months here before my public existence is illegal here. The moderate candidate in our gubernatorial election has already passed sweeping anti-trans legislation. I am not wanted here.
I am struggling with this, too.
…
It wasn’t even all that long ago I was in this same place, either. I started the year out just like this; you can only be noticed with so much malice before you start to internalize the danger, and I was noticed with a lot of malice back when I lived in Reno, NV. Slurs and getting followed and mocked and never feeling quite safe and things of that nature; throw in watching the barely-thwarted Coeur D'Alene Pride parade attack by an organized militia unfolding on CNN in a rural diner while a group of men stared daggers at me for my entire meal, and I finally couldn’t do it anymore. Over the span of six months of being peppered with harassment and close calls and ever-hotter-rhetoric, I went from an adventurer to a shut-in. Mid-2021 I was living in a van, driving through the West—stopping in every tiny town’s tiny restaurants I could find by day, and sleeping under the stars alone by night, unafraid of almost everything—and by mid-2022, I was unable to leave my house for coffee without having a panic attack. I was petrified.
I sought therapy, and I was able to leave the house again with professional help, but I didn’t make significant progress on my fears until the harassment stopped for a bit. There was, through a combination of dumb luck and the grace period of dulled rhetoric after Pride passed but before the midterms were too near, a short span where I had some breathing room. I stopped getting harassed for a bit, and the headlines weren’t quite as full of firebombs and shattered windows.
And my mental health rebounded accordingly. I started road-tripping again. I was willing to enter crowds anew, meet new people, and enjoy new hobbies. I let myself walk down the street for a coffee again. I made art that I found meaningful, instead of feeling paralyzed. I was a better partner, I was more present, and I enjoyed living so much more. It was a feeling I hadn’t enjoyed in years, and I missed it so much.
…
And now here I am again, scared to go outside, trying desperately to dodge the electric shocks of the society I live in. Every time I go to a bar or a restaurant or a grocery store, all the glares full of malice that never went away bore through me once more. As the temperature climbs, it gets harder to convince myself I’m wrong about the glares, and the comments, and the people following me home.
I think perhaps it's PTSD of some form. Every bad experience from my road trip, from Reno, from my move - they've all come back in such sharp relief in the past few weeks. The problem is, trying to move past it is like trying to recover from living in a war zone while the bombs are still going off in your front yard.
After all, the richest man in the world is encouraging this. I jettisoned the main avenue I had to a career because he bought my main social website and turned it into a hub of anti-trans "activists". The largest "news" TV network in America is encouraging this. My mother thinks drag queens are "groomers" because of them. The paper of record has been "asking questions" for as long as we've been objects of interest instead of scorn.
And yet, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice, I am assured. It will get better.
But if this is winning, I will assuredly never survive losing. This electoral bullshit, this rhetorical head-butting, it exists in a world that I don’t live in—I can’t go outside without fucking anxiety medication, solely because of what I have had to continually live through. I know I could have healed, and I could have lived a normal life. I saw glimpses in the gaps between being scared for my life. I saw what happened when the trauma paused It was so beautiful and I was so happy, and now I'm inside and trembling again.
…
I am so tired of cis society’s seemingly unflinching belief that the queer rights movement is winning because of some toothless EO's from Biden. I am supposed to believe all of this is some sort of temporary roadblock on my path to a cis vision of queer liberation, where I can have a job at Lockheed Martin, right alongside every cis person who sold their soul, too. The dead bodies at Q Club and the fact I won’t feel safe at home for years to come—these are acceptable losses on the way to this liberation.
I’ll figure out how to get through whatever comes, I hope. But for the love of Christ stop telling me to be thankful for where we are unless you’re living through this shit in the trenches with me and my friends; unless you’re helping me get over the panic attacks when I turn on the shower.